-Waylon Fong

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Then, I was reminded of why I chose this path in the first place; because I refuse to settle for a career that I'm not passionate about. Remembering this, I decided that I could not let myself give up so easily. There will always be people around you that will doubt you, but you should never be the one to sell yourself short. First and foremost, you must be completely honest with yourself. If you can do that and still believe in yourself, then don't let anything stand in your way.

Tomorrow is my first day of classes at SMU Guildhall for what I hope will lead to a masters degree in Digital Game Development and a new job. I hear it's an intense curriculum, but as always I will do my best. Just coming to The Guildhall was a huge step for me in the right direction. I'll leave you with a quote that I try to live by:

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." -Calvin Coolidge

I got accepted to The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University for a masters program that specializes in level design. I've always considered my strengths to be in system or technical design, but I will now attempt to reinvent myself as a level designer. I believe The Guildhall will be a good complement to the education I received at USC Interactive Media Division; whereas IMD has a progressive philosophy that focuses on innovation and expression, The Guildhall has a practical philosophy that focuses on relevant skills and teamwork. I'm hoping the combination of the two will allow me to finally break into the game industry.

Liu Yan outside the Olympic stadium before the accident

I've narrowed down a list of game franchises I'd be interested to work on that I think I could be a good fit for. While I'm sending out applications or waiting for openings, I'll bide my time by researching games that I should be familiar with, reading books to improve my game design, and working on indie game projects that have been on the back burner. If worst comes to worst and I can't find a job within a year, I'll go back to school I'll go back to school for a Master’s degree or a second Bachelor’s degree in something that interests me as a game designer. However long it takes, I will get my career back on track. Wish me luck...

You see, the game industry is a business that is driven by production & marketing. Production is interested in finishing the game on schedule and under budget. To the game designer, that means you'll always be making games with limited time and resources. Marketing is interested in selling as many copies of the game as possible. To the game designer, that means you'll probably have to spend time assisting marketing with screenshots, trailers, public relations, etc. I’m finding that there is so much involved in making and selling games that there isn’t much time for personal growth. You just crunch to finish a game, then move on to the next one; work is more of a grind than a flow. Ironically, I think spending all my time making UFC 2009 is actually holding me back as a game designer.

Believe me, I want nothing more than to be good at my job and help make this game great. But in order to do so, I need to keep evolving as a game designer. That means learning new skills, researching topics of interest, and playing lots of games (not to be overlooked). In the game industry, it's difficult to find the time for all of that in between crunches. The more I think about it, the more I believe it’d be a good idea to take a sabbatical periodically. But enough fantasizing! UFC 2010 beckons, it’s time to get back to work…

So what the hell does this have to do with game design, you ask? Well I’ve been working sporadically on an indie game in my spare time. Going into the project, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted the game to be. Unfortunately, as development progressed, the game turned out to be not very fun to play. This is not uncommon, as no game is perfect in its first iteration. I figured it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed with some tweaking. The problem is, I stuck with some bad game design choices for a long time. I kept stubbornly rationalizing why my vision should work, even though I felt like it was hindering the player's experience. Now that I realize this, I will have to go back to the drawing board and re-design some of the core gameplay mechanics.

Like most creative endeavors, both film editing and game design are really more art than science. I believe it’s good to put some thought into your game design, as long as you don’t allow your mind to censor what your gut is telling you. After all, your audience will either have fun with your game or they won't; you’ll never be able to rationalize your game design choices to them. Thoughts?

You see, I'm supposed to be a design intern. But given the needs of development, I'm being used almost entirely as a production intern. Production can be described as the management of budgets, schedules, and personnel, but it also entails anything that needs to be done in order to ship the game on time. For an intern like me, that means a lot of important-but-menial tasks. Taking screenshots & trailer footage, auditing assets, managing data for fighters & sponsors, and other miscellaneousness. Having spent 4 years in college (at USC's Interactive Media Division) actually designing games and voraciously learning anything that I happened to be interested in, I am finding my current job to be unfulfilling, to say the least.

Given that I'm only an intern, I have no problem paying my dues. That being said, I fear that I'm not getting enough design tasks for my superiors to properly evaluate my abilities. If I hope to be employed as a game designer (and not a production manager) at the end of my internship, I have to figure out a way to prove my worth as a game designer. I believe I am capable of contributing so much more to this game than I've been allowed to so far. Something must change...

You see, I am a huge mixed martial arts (MMA) fan. Even before the sport became popular, I’ve been watching all the UFC, Pride, and other MMA events that I possibly could. I casually trained in various martial arts for a few years (namely Jiu-jitsu, wrestling & boxing) and I now regularly train at Bas Rutten’s MMA gym, Elite MMA. I made my way to THQ specifically because they were publishing the first UFC game in 5 years, which I desperately wanted to be a part of. I always wanted to make the most realistic simulation of MMA ever; the Madden of MMA, so to speak. But I'm coming to realize that game design isn’t about making the game you want to make. It’s about making the game that's right for your audience.

Most of our audience may only have a passing knowledge of MMA, if even that. Accordingly, our game has to be accessible to the player that doesn’t know or care about the technical aspects of MMA and just wants to brawl. The difficult part is designing a game that achieves that, yet still feels “as real as it gets”. Since these are often contradictory goals, that means we can’t make an MMA game that’s as deep or as realistic as I'd like it to be. While our game may feel dumbed down to me, in playtests it has proven to be frustratingly difficult to grasp for novice players that don’t understand MMA. I believe that you won't always be able to make the game that you want to play, but you still have to make a game that you're proud of. Rather than wanting to make the most realistic simulation of MMA ever, I now strive to make an MMA game that can give a greater understanding (and hopefully appreciation) of the sport to someone that previously knew little about it. Thoughts?

Due to the complexity of move inputs and each character having different inputs for their many unique moves, fighting games usually require a significant amount of knowledge and skill to execute the more advanced moves. The Hadouken is a good example of this, although some can get much more difficult, (King's chain throws from Tekken, anyone?). An expert player must memorize the correct inputs of up to 100+ moves per character and practice for hours to be able to execute each of them reliably. I suppose it could be argued that this sort of training is analogous to actually learning a martial art. Unfortunately, the average player just doesn't have the discipline for a fighting game that requires so much commitment.

I believe the answer lies in simplifying the interface while maintaining as much depth in the fighting mechanics as possible. My philosophy is that performing moves in a fighting game should not require any skill. Ideally, move inputs should be simple and intuitive enough that a beginner could potentially figure out and reliably execute every move in the game. But doesn’t that just reward button-mashers? Yes and no. A beginner may be able to do all the moves, but an expert would know how and when to use those moves in any given situation. Let's look at a few examples.

As an early fighting game, Street Fighter had to be much simpler than modern fighting games in order to attract new players. The basic moves are executed by pressing one of the 6 attack buttons (light punch, medium punch, heavy punch, light kick, medium kick or heavy kick) while standing, ducking or jumping. Each character only has a few special moves with unique inputs, so the majority of the moves are simple enough for beginners to use. Despite being a modern fighting game, Soul Calibur is relatively easy to learn even though it has lots of moves. The basic moves are executed by pressing one of 3 attack buttons (horizontal attack, vertical attack or kick) while standing, ducking, jumping, running, side-stepping or pressing a single direction (away, down-away, down, down-toward or toward) during the attack. Each character has plenty of advanced moves with unique inputs too, but there are enough simple moves for beginners to get started. Although it isn't considered a traditional fighting game, Super Smash Bros. is perhaps the best example of this philosophy because it caters to a broader market of casual players. Basic moves are executed by pressing the attack button while idle or pressing a single direction (up, down or left/right) on the ground or in the air. "Smash Attacks", or powerful moves, are executed by pressing the attack button while tapping a single direction. Special moves are executed by pressing the special move button (could it get any simpler?) while idle or pressing a single direction. There are really no advanced moves with unique inputs, so literally every move in the game is simple enough for beginners to use.

If you ask me, the popularity of these games is largely due to the accessibility of their interface design. Each of them has plenty of simple moves that can be performed with a single button either by itself or with a single direction. And although every character may have unique moves, the inputs for at least the basic moves are consistent across all characters; using the same input on a different character will always produce a similar move. The implementation of this philosophy is a fighting game that is easy for beginners to learn how to play. Of course, it takes a lot more than accessibility to make a good fighting game (such as deep fighting mechanics and balanced characters), but I believe it is the key to reviving a once-formidable genre. Thoughts?

If I had to guess, I would say that the problem lies in the creative differences between the ways we each envision the game. I believe it should be realistic and deep enough to satisfy its core audience of mixed martial arts fans. Omar believes it needs to be accessible enough to attract a broader audience in order for it to be successful. I'll admit, it's not easy for me to work within someone else's design. Since we're both pretty opinionated, I try to avoid butting heads as much as possible. Unfortunately, in doing so, I feel like I'm preventing myself from having much useful input on the game. I guess I've just learned to accept the fact that we're never going to see things the same way.

Then one day not too long ago, I happened to google Omar's name and I stumbled across his blog. What I read caused me to reevaluate my opinion of him. It turns out we're not all that different in the way we think about games and game design. In fact, I would go as far as to say that a lot of the stuff Omar writes sounds eerily similar to something I can imagine I would write (albeit much more eloquent). In light of this, I've decided to make an effort to improve communication with him, to try to understand his opinion and to express my own more clearly but less stubbornly. At the end of the day, this is really his game and it's my job to help him make it better. I'm sure I can learn a lot from him in the process. Omar, here comes a new helper!

To make matters worse, even though I'm supposed to be a design intern, I rarely get a chance to do any design-oriented tasks. Given that the game was well into production by the time I joined, I have spent the vast majority of my internship figuratively putting out fires for the production, art, and audio departments. Because of this, I feared that my worth as a game designer has not been adequately gauged.

So the producer brought me into his office today and let me know what was going to happen. And the verdict is (drum roll)... extended for 3 more months! So I've managed to avoid the chopping block... for now. Who knows how many more times my internship will be extended. In the meantime, I hope to prove how valuable I am to the UFC video game franchise.